System and method for monitoring business performance using monitoring artifacts

ABSTRACT

A method (and system) of monitoring business performance using a monitoring artifact includes processing an incoming event using the monitoring artifact

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention generally relates to a system and a method formonitoring business performance. In particular, the present invention isdirected to a method and a system for monitoring business performanceusing monitoring artifacts.

2. Description of the Related Art

For an enterprise to be competitive, the business processes for theenterprise needs to constantly evolve to keep up with rapid changes in abusiness environment and to continuously service the information needsof the employees, the customers, and the trading partners of thatenterprise. In order to satisfy these needs an enterprise requiresin-depth visibility, monitoring, and management routines across all itsbusiness processes.

Conventional business process monitoring approaches are often focused onan after-the-fact reporting approach or an event-driven approach. Thereporting approach requires the business process to publish pertinentinformation into a database or data warehouse and uses queries againstthe data. The queries are designed based on the calculations that arerequired for performance parameters that will be considered. This is astatic analysis approach that does not take into account the dynamicnature of a business and is not well suited for real-time monitoring.

Event-based monitoring systems receive and correlate live events thatare published in the course of a business process. This approach retainssome of the dynamic aspects of the business process and attempts toenable real-time monitoring. The correlation of events realizes thecalculation of performance metrics. The realization of the correlationtechnology is usually rule based. Conventional event based systemsresolve dynamic aspects of business processes, but typically ignore thestatic aspects and, hence, are less suitable for reporting.

Conventional monitoring systems are often designed either in a static orevent-based way where static systems incorporate dynamic features byfrequently checking for updates on the databases to query for newentries. Event-based solutions incorporate the data aspect by providingadditional solution modules outside of the scope of event managementthat allow for static reporting abilities.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In view of the foregoing and other exemplary problems, drawbacks, anddisadvantages of the conventional methods and structures, an exemplaryfeature of the present invention is to provide a method and structure inwhich both static and dynamic aspects of monitoring are comprised withinone holistic concept that enables both reporting and event basedmonitoring.

In a first exemplary aspect of the present invention, a method ofmonitoring business performance using a monitoring artifact includesprocessing an incoming event using the monitoring artifact.

In a second exemplary aspect of the present invention, a system formonitoring business performance using a monitoring artifact includes aprocess model that indicates the state of a monitoring process, aninformation model that comprises at least one root data elementcontaining an indicator of the state of the monitoring process, and anaccess model that determines the access for at least one user to themonitoring artifact.

In a third exemplary aspect of the present invention, a system ofmonitoring business performance using a monitoring artifact includesmeans for processing an incoming event using the monitoring artifact.

An exemplary embodiment of the present invention is a system and methodfor monitoring business performance using monitoring artifacts.

An exemplary embodiment of the present invention monitors businessprocesses. For example, a performance indicator may be defined whichmeasures an aspect of how a business process performs during execution.One example of a business process is a shipping process where tender isshipped from a supplier to a receiver via a warehouse owned by a seller.An example of a performance indicator may be a turn-around time whichdescribes the time needed to ship the tender from the supplier warehouseto the receiver. Another example of a performance metric may be how manygoods are shipped during any given day.

A challenge is to monitor the shipped goods as they move throughdifferent locations. The user of monitoring information could be aseller that is interested in the statistics of good throughput andaverage turn around times or an end consumer who wants to know thecurrent location of an ordered good to estimate its time of arrival.

In this example, there is a focus on the business process of the sellerthat includes the goods shipped out from the supplier's side,transported to the seller's warehouse, and shipped out to the endconsumer of the goods. The steps in the business process could includeregistering the goods through a scanner at the original location,uploading the goods onto the truck, registering the goods upon arrivalat the seller's warehouse, off-loading the goods and shelving the goodsin the seller's warehouse, register the goods for shipment to theend-consumer, off-loading the goods from the shelves and upload thetruck, and finally registering the goods upon arrival at the endconsumers location.

In this example there may be two monitoring approaches, a staticmonitoring approach based on data in a data warehouse and an event basedreal-time monitoring approach. Performance metrics for this example mayinclude the average turn around time and the average number of goodsshipped per day.

An exemplary embodiment of the present invention considers themonitoring of the shipment process as another process. This conceptualview is manifested through the use of monitoring artifacts, which willbe described in detail below. Monitoring the business process asdescribed above requires an understanding of performance indicators thatare calculated using data generated by business processes, and anunderstanding of the monitoring process. Furthermore, it is necessary tounderstand the access that business actors use to monitor information.For example, a customer may be interested in the current locationwhereas a business manager may be interested in the average throughputof the goods. Each of these actors needs access to different monitoringinformation.

An exemplary logical model of the invention may contain three parts asdescribed in more detail below, an information model, a life-cyclemodel, and an access model.

An exemplary information model captures all information that ispertinent to the monitoring context. That is, an information modelcontains information that describes what results are produced by themonitoring process and what information is employed to produces theseresults.

An exemplary life-cycle model defines monitoring tasks that act uponinformation in the information model. The life-cycle model may describetasks that include a group of elements such as, for example, “Correlateevents and calculate indicators”, “Evaluate results”, “Detect BusinessSituations”, “Act” and “Completed”. These elements represent the statesof the monitoring artifact. A life-cycle model can be represented usingany appropriate scheme such as, for example, a state-machine model, aPetri-net model, or similar models. A life-cycle model may provide theoverall processing steps of a monitoring artifact. Each task in alife-cycle model may spawn off another process such as, for example, aprocess that correlates events.

An exemplary access model may define access by actors to information inthe information model. This aspect may be defaulted by allowing accessto anyone who is interested in the monitoring information.Alternatively, access may be restricted based upon the role of an actorusing standard role-based access control lists.

For the shipping example, consider an analyst who conceptualizes how tomonitor the shipping process. There are three aspects to be analyzed.First, what is the information that is needed to calculate performanceindicators for the business process? For example, the shipment of goodsmay be monitored by tracing the location of each good. The shipmentlabel typically identifies each good uniquely. Hence, the informationrequired to monitor a specific unit is its identification andpotentially a name. Furthermore, the monitoring process may also collecttime stamps for each location change, such as, for example, when theunit has either left or arrived at a location. Finally, there may be aneed to capture the information that relates to the results of themonitoring process, such as, for example, turn-around time per process,per day etc. or number of goods shipped. All of this information may becaptured in a logical information model.

Second, the information captured above may be processed to producemonitoring results. Typical steps of a monitoring operation include agroup of tasks such as, for example, a correlation of monitoring events,an analysis of performance indicator values, and actions that can betaken depending on the results for the performance indicators. In theshipping example, the events that are published by the business process,such as “good shipped at time t” are correlated to each other. Further,performance indicators may be evaluated and business situations may bedetected, such as a performance indicator being over a certainthreshold. Actions may be defined to be taken if a business situationarises. These different tasks may specify the operations that work onthe information captured in the monitoring artifact information.

Within each of these tasks, an exemplary embodiment of a system of theinvention may specify the processing of events and calculatedinformation. For example, when an event indicates that an item has beenshipped a process, the system may calculate the turn-around time of thisitem when another event indicates that the shipment has arrived at adestination. This calculation is a correlation between the two events.This may be expressed as one of many representations such as a statemachine or a business process or a rule-based correlation mechanism orother. The calculation of the performance indicator turn-around time maybe executed at the end of the correlation and stored in an informationtable.

The operations that are defined in a monitoring artifact determine whena correlation, such as, for example, the calculation of the averageturn-around time, will occur. For example, the system may specify thatthe turn-around time will be calculated at the end of each business day,every hour, or the like. Depending on this definition, the monitoringartifact will move into an evaluation state and calculate the turnaround time for all entries in its information table.

After an evaluation has been completed, the average turn-around time maybe compared against a threshold to detect if there are any situationsthat could trigger an action. For example, the system may determinewhether the average turn around time has increased over the last twoweeks and, if so, the system may alert a business manager who may needto intervene.

A third aspect of an exemplary monitoring artifact may be concerned withinformation access. The information defined in the context of amonitoring artifact may contain results from the correlation betweenevents from the business process, and the detection of businesssituations. There may be different users who are interested in differenttypes of this information. For example, a business manager of a sellermay be interested in all of the information related to a monitoringartifact, while an end-consumer should not access turn-around times forshipments. Thus, the access model of the monitoring artifact maydetermine the access provided to these different actors.

An exemplary embodiment of a monitoring artifact may contain all threeaspects as described above.

An exemplary embodiment of the present invention provides severaladvantages over conventional systems. First, conventional monitoringapproaches take a static view to monitoring rather than consideringmonitoring as a process. An exemplary embodiment of the presentinvention provides the insight that monitoring may be conceptualized asa business process and also provides the logical architecture for amonitoring environment that supports state-full monitoring processes.

Second, conceptualizing and implementing monitoring as a process entailsthe benefits of process-centric approaches. For example, severalversions of a key performance indicator evaluation process may bedeployed at the same time.

Third, a monitoring artifact may represent a process that can be changedover time. Hence, monitoring artifacts may allow for dynamic evolutionof key performance indicators.

Fourth, one goal of business process monitoring is to react tosituations in an appropriate way. If a business process has a keyperformance indicator that is outside of a desired range of values, thenthere may be actions that could help rectify the situation beyond simplysending an alert. For example, if a warehouse has an inventory controlsystem that allows for automatic replenishment of inventory if thestocks go beyond a certain threshold, a business situation analysiscould potentially invoke a warehouse control system if such a situationis detected.

In contrast to conventional systems and methods for monitoring, theinventors have invented an entirely new paradigm which views monitoringprocesses as being dynamic rather than static and yet allows for staticanalysis as the monitoring artifact captures all information that ispertinent to the monitoring context under consideration (for example,monitoring of shipments). This new paradigm enables a much wider rangeof control over the underlying business processes than hasconventionally been available.

For example, the conventional static view of monitoring processes haveled to an approach where certain aspects of a business process areselected for monitoring and data about those aspects are collected. Thisapproach would neglect the real-time aspect of a business process.

An exemplary embodiment of the present invention defines a monitoringartifact as a model, which may be represented in any readablerepresentation such as, for example, extensible markup language. Themonitoring artifact model can be executed by a run-time similar to anybusiness process management run-time that allows the execution ofstate-managed processes.

An exemplary embodiment of the present invention enables the selection,identification, and/or determination of an appropriate action thatshould be taken in response to such information. Typically businessactions to rectify potential critical business situations, such as, forexample, low stock, high turn-around times, etc. are defined as businessprocesses. A monitoring artifact in accordance with the presentinvention may measure the performance of a business process and based onan analysis of the business situation may trigger another businessprocess that performs a compensatory action, such as, for example,ordering new goods for replenishment. This is a concept provided by thepresent invention that lacks in conventional monitoring static and eventbased approaches.

An exemplary embodiment of the present invention may be applied tomultiple business processes and may improve the operation of multiplebusiness processes and to improve the interaction between multiplebusiness processes.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The foregoing and other exemplary purposes, aspects and advantages willbe better understood from the following detailed description of anexemplary embodiment of the invention with reference to the drawings, inwhich:

FIG. 1 illustrates one exemplary monitoring scenario 100 in accordancewith the present invention;

FIG. 2 illustrates an exemplary structure for a monitoring artifact 200in accordance with the present invention;

FIG. 3 illustrates an exemplary information model 300 in accordance withthe present invention;

FIG. 4 illustrates an exemplary process model 400 in accordance with thepresent invention;

FIG. 5 illustrates an exemplary access model in accordance with thepresent invention;

FIG. 6 illustrates a two exemplary events in accordance with anexemplary embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 7 illustrates an exemplary process model 700 as a state machine inaccordance with the present invention;

FIG. 8 illustrates an exemplary meta-model 800 for a process model inaccordance with the present invention;

FIG. 9 illustrates an exemplary information schema meta-model 900 inaccordance with the present invention;

FIG. 10 illustrates an exemplary meta-model 1000 for an access model inaccordance with the present invention;

FIG. 11 illustrates an exemplary hardware configuration 1100 inaccordance with the present invention; and

FIG. 12 illustrates exemplary signal-bearing media 1200 and 1202 inaccordance with the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF EXEMPLARY EMBODIMENTS OF THE INVENTION

Referring now to the drawings, and more particularly to FIGS. 1-12,there are shown exemplary embodiments of the method and structures ofthe present invention.

FIG. 1 illustrates one exemplary monitoring scenario 100 for anexemplary embodiment of this invention. A business process may include aseries of tasks 102 which may each emit a business event 104 that isreceived by a monitoring platform 106.

The monitoring scenario 100 also illustrates multiple monitoring users108. A monitoring user 108 may be interested in the key performanceindicators that are provided by the monitoring platform 106. Forexample, a monitoring user 108 may be a business user who has aninterest in the performance of the business processes. These monitoringusers 108 may even be outside the business process integrationinfrastructure. The monitoring user 108 may also be another businessprocess.

The monitoring platform 106 provides a run-time environment upon whichmonitoring artifacts (described below) may be executed.

FIG. 2 illustrates an exemplary structure of a monitoring artifact 200.The monitoring artifact 200 includes a process model 202, an informationmodel 204, and an access model 206. The information model 204 mayrepresent information that is needed for current monitoring informationand historical data. The process model 202 may describe processes thatare performed by the monitoring artifact, such as, calculations, alerts,correlations, and the like. The access model 206 determines the accessthat is provided by monitoring users 108 to the monitoring artifact.

FIG. 3 illustrates an exemplary information model 300 for the shippingexample described above. The information model 300 contains a root tablecalled “Artifact_root” 302 that contains two entries. The root table 302includes a “correlationId” element 304, which identifies an instance ofthe monitoring artifact, and a “currentstate” element 306, whichidentifies a state of the monitoring artifact. The information model 300also contains a “Shipment” table 308, a “ResultsPerShipment” table 310,a “Location” table 312, and an “AvgResults” table 314. These othertables describe information that may be relevant to the monitoringscenario. The “Shipment” table 308 includes, for example, the time theshipment left the supplier (“time_shipped” 316, and the time theshipment reached the distribution center (“time_at_DC” 318), and thelike.

The process model 202 describes processes by which events 104 may beaggregated, evaluated, define key performance indicators, analyzed, andchecked for situation violations. An exemplary process model 400 isillustrated by FIG. 4. The process model 400 includes a correlateprocess 402, an evaluate process 404, a detect process 406, and an alertprocess 408. In FIG. 4, the process model 400 starts with a correlateprocess 402 which receives business events 104 (“InputEvent”) that arestored in the information model 204 and that correlates these events 104to each other. The correlate process 402 may determine performanceindicates such as, for example, a number of incoming requests,turn-around times, and the like. FIG. 4 illustrates an exemplarycorrelate process 402 which may include a process which calculates aturn-around time as illustrated at 410. The turn-around calculationprocess 410 may receive a start-time 412 that indicates that the processis to be started, may then match events that are stored by theinformation model at 414, and may then continue to step 416, where theturn around time is calculated.

The process model 400 also includes an evaluate process 404. An evaluateprocess 404 may be triggered. For example, an evaluate process 404 maybe triggered to calculate an average turn-around time after thecorrelate process 402 calculates a predetermined number of turn aroundtimes.

Next, the process model 400 includes a detect process 406. A detectprocess 406 may detect whether predetermined contingencies have beensatisfied. For example, the detect process 406 may detect whether or notthe average turn-around is greater than a predetermined threshold. Thedetect process 406 may also determine if a performance indicator isoutside of defined boundaries.

The process model 400 also includes an alert process 408 which may betriggered based upon the detection of a contingency by the detectprocess 406. For example, if the detect process 406 determines that theaverage turn-around is greater than a predetermined threshold, then thealert process 408 may issue an alert, such as, for example, notify abusiness owner of the detected event.

FIG. 4 further illustrates that the results of each process 402-408 maybe stored in the information model 204.

An access model for a monitoring artifact in accordance with the presentinvention may describe the access that users may have to the monitoringartifact as well as the interface with which a user accesses themonitoring artifact. An exemplary access model 402 for a monitoringartifact 500 is illustrated by FIG. 5. As shown in FIG. 5 a businessuser 504 can look at the data that was generated during the evaluationprocess 404, e.g. average turn-around time. The business user 504typically accesses the system through a dashboard 506. The dashboard 506is not part of the modeling environment but is only shown asconceptualization to illustrate the importance of access models. In thisexample, the case that a business user 504 has access to the monitoringartifact root information table 512 and the table that stores theaverage turn around time 514 is modeled. To realize this scenario, theaccess model 502 specifies what the business user can read using the“Results_Read_Access” table 510.

The monitoring artifact 500 provides an external (public) interfaceexposing operations that can be invoked on the monitoring artifact 500.Furthermore, it exposes all of the operations that may read and updateinformation to the monitoring artifact 500, as specified through themonitoring views. The read and update mechanism is exemplified in FIG. 5that illustrates an exemplary access model 502.

The access model 502 specifies that a user of the monitoring artifact500 can read, for example, “correlation_id” and “currentState” the“Artifact_root” table 512 and additionally “result_id” and“avg_turn_around_time” from the “AvgResults” table 514.

An external client (not shown) to a monitoring artifact may send eventsthat will drive the behavior of the monitoring artifact as described inthe monitoring process model. FIG. 6 shows an example of two events. A“receiveEvent” event 602 triggers a correlation process of the processmodel 604 and a “DetectSituation” event 606 moves the monitoring process604 into a detect state.

A process model may control the state of the monitoring artifact anddefines the basic tasks and flow of a monitoring artifact. FIG. 7illustrates a process model 700 as a state machine. The process model700 integrates a key performance calculation state machine 702 as acorrelation process 708 and an email application 704 as an alert process710. The transition for moving from the “start monitoring” process 706to the correlation process 708 invokes the key performance calculationstate machine 702 to calculate a turn-around key performance indicator.

FIG. 8 shows an exemplary meta-model for a process model 800 using anextensible markup language in accordance with the present invention. Theexemplary model 800 uses a finite state machine abstraction to describea process. The root element of the meta model 800 is “artifactLifecycle”element 802. The “artifactLifecyle” element 802 contains a state element804 which is described by a name attribute 806 and an initial attribute818 to indicate if this state is a start state of the process. The stateelement 804 further contains a transition element 808 which models thetransition between states. The attributes 810 of the transition element808 declare the start and the end state for the transition. An externalservice may optionally be invoked on the transition as declared by aninvoke element 812. The service to be invoked may be described by a“targetService” attribute 814. The root element 802 can also contain adescriptive attribute 816. An exemplary instance of the meta-model 800is shown in FIG. 7. The states are “Start Monitoring” 706, “Correlated”708, “Evaluated” 712, “Detected” 714 and “Action Taken” 710. Thetransition from “Start Monitoring 706” to “Correlated” 708 would invokea target service 702 to perform the KPI calculation as described above.

An exemplary information model in accordance with the present inventionrepresents data that is pertinent to one or many monitoring artifacts.FIG. 9 shows an exemplary information schema meta-model 900.

The element “information” 902 is the root of the meta-model 900. Itcontains an element “dataElement” 904, which describes a collection ofdata attributes 906, where each data attribute 906 is described byattributes 908 such as, for example, name, type, uniqueness, etc. The“dataElement” element 904 contains “dataElement” 910 which allows thecreation hierarchical information models.

An instance of this model 900 is illustrated in FIG. 3. An instance ofroot element information 902 is expressed as the information model 300.An example of a “dataElement” 904 is “Shipment” 316, which contains“dataAttributes” 906 such as “shipment_id,” “scheduled_shipment”, etc.

The source and location of the information is not specified in theinformation model. The source and location of the information can bedata bases, flat files, applications, etc.

The access model may describe what part of the monitoring artifact isexposed to the consumers of the information who are participating in thecourse of one or many monitoring processes. FIG. 10 shows an exemplarymeta-model 1000 for an access mode. The root “Access” 1002 contains a“type” attribute 1004 that describes whether the access model 1000 isfor read or write access. Furthermore, the “Access” root 1002 optionallycontains a reference to an information element 1006 which is explainedabove in reference to FIG. 9 and specifically element information 902.To model the role which accesses information, the access model 1000 maycontain multiple “role” attributes 1008. Further, a “state” element 1010corresponds to the state 804 which is described above with respect toFIG. 8. The “state” element 1010 may restrict access based upon thestate of the monitoring artifact.

Referring now to FIG. 11, system 1100 illustrates a typical hardwareconfiguration which may be used for implementing the inventive systemand method for monitoring business performance using monitoringartifacts. The configuration has preferably at least one processor orcentral processing unit (CPU) 1110. The CPUs 1102 are interconnected viaa system bus 1112 to a random access memory (RAM) 1114, read-only memory(ROM) 1116, input/output (I/O) adapter 1118 (for connecting peripheraldevices such as disk units 1121 and tape drives 1140 to the bus 1112),user interface adapter 1122 (for connecting a keyboard 1124, mouse 1126,speaker 1128, microphone 1132, and/or other user interface device to thebus 1112), a communication adapter 1134 for connecting an informationhandling system to a data processing network, the Internet, andIntranet, a personal area network (PAN), etc., and a display adapter1136 for connecting the bus 1112 to a display device 1138 and/or printer1139. Further, an automated reader/scanner 1141 may be included. Suchreaders/scanners are commercially available from many sources.

In addition to the system described above, a different aspect of theinvention includes a computer-implemented method for performing theabove method. As an example, this method may be implemented in theparticular environment discussed above.

Such a method may be implemented, for example, by operating a computer,as embodied by a digital data processing apparatus, to execute asequence of machine-readable instructions. These instructions may residein various types of signal-bearing media.

Thus, this aspect of the present invention is directed to a programmedproduct, including signal-bearing media tangibly embodying a program ofmachine-readable instructions executable by a digital data processor toperform the above method.

Such a method may be implemented, for example, by operating the CPU 1110to execute a sequence of machine-readable instructions. Theseinstructions may reside in various types of signal bearing media.

Thus, this aspect of the present invention is directed to a programmedproduct, comprising signal-bearing media tangibly embodying a program ofmachine-readable instructions executable by a digital data processorincorporating the CPU 410 and hardware above, to perform the method ofthe invention.

This signal-bearing media may include, for example, a RAM containedwithin the CPU 1110, as represented by the fast-access storage forexample. Alternatively, the instructions may be contained in anothersignal-bearing media, such as a magnetic data storage diskette 1200 orCD-ROM 1202, (FIG. 12), directly or indirectly accessible by the CPU1210

Whether contained in the computer server/CPU 1110, or elsewhere, theinstructions may be stored on a variety of machine-readable data storagemedia, such as DASD storage (e.g., a conventional “hard drive” or a RAIDarray), magnetic tape, electronic read-only memory (e.g., ROM, EPROM, orEEPROM), an optical storage device (e.g., CD-ROM, WORM, DVD, digitaloptical tape, etc.), paper “punch” cards, or other suitablesignal-bearing media. In an illustrative embodiment of the invention,the machine-readable instructions may comprise software object code,complied from a language such as “C,” etc.

While the invention has been described in terms of several exemplaryembodiments, those skilled in the art will recognize that the inventioncan be practiced with modification.

Further, it is noted that, Applicants' intent is to encompassequivalents of all claim elements, even if amended later duringprosecution.

1. A method of monitoring business performance using a monitoringartifact, the method comprising: processing an incoming event using saidmonitoring artifact.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein said monitoringartifact comprises a stateful entity.
 3. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising adjusting a monitoring infrastructure of said businessperformance based upon said processing.
 4. The method of claim 1,further comprising adjusting a business process based upon saidprocessing.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein said monitoring artifactcomprises at least one of a process model, an information model, and anaccess model.
 6. The method of claim 5, wherein said process modelindicates a state of the method of monitoring business performance. 7.The method of claim 6, wherein said process model further indicates anyof transitions between states, events that trigger state changes, guardconditions that verify if a trigger of a state change is valid, andactions associated with a transition between states.
 8. The method ofclaim 5, wherein said information model comprises at least one root dataelement containing an indicator of a state of the method of monitoringbusiness performance.
 9. The method of claim 5, wherein said accessmodel determines access for at least one user to said monitoringartifact.
 10. A monitoring artifact by which a system monitors businessperformance, the monitoring artifact comprising: a process model thatindicates a state of a monitoring process; an information model thatcomprises at least one root data element containing an indicator of thestate of said monitoring process; and an access model that determinesthe access for at least one user to said monitoring artifact.
 11. Theartifact of claim 10, wherein said process model indicates at least oneprocess for an input event.
 12. The artifact of claim 11, wherein saidat least one process comprises a correlating process that correlates aninput event to a performance metric, an evaluation step that evaluatesthe performance metric using a pre-determined metric, a detection stepthat determines whether said evaluation indicates a condition issatisfied, and an alert process that alerts a user if said condition issatisfied.
 13. The artifact of claim 10, wherein said process modelfurther indicates transitions between states, events that trigger statechanges, guard conditions that verify if a trigger of a state change isvalid, and actions associated with a transition between states.
 14. Theartifact of claim 10, wherein said information model comprises at leastone root data element containing an indicator of the state of the methodof monitoring business performance.
 15. The artifact of claim 10,wherein said access model determines the access for at least one user tosaid monitoring artifact.
 16. The artifact of claim 10, wherein saidmonitoring artifact adjusts a business process based upon saidmonitoring.
 17. A program embodied in a computer readable mediumexecutable by a digital processing system for monitoring businessperformance using a monitoring artifact, said program comprisinginstructions for executing the method of claim
 1. 18. A system formonitoring business performance using a monitoring artifact, comprising:means for processing an incoming event using said monitoring artifact;and means for adjusting a monitoring infrastructure of said businessperformance based upon said processing.
 19. The system of claim 18,wherein said monitoring artifact comprises a stateful entity.
 20. Thesystem of claim 18, wherein said monitoring artifact comprises at leastone of a process model, an information model, and an access model.